Dalton McGuinty resigns as Ontario premier

Dalton McGuinty has resigned from Ontario politics and taken the rare step of suspending the legislature,

Ontario's premier of nine years, Liberal Dalton McGuinty, stepped down Monday. McGuinty says he will stay on until a new leader has been chosen and that it's time for the party to embrace a new set of ideas.

Premier Dalton McGuinty is saying so long, but not necessarily goodbye.

McGuinty has resigned from Ontario politics and taken the rare step of suspending the legislature, but not before dangling the possibility of a run for the federal Liberal leadership against front-runner Justin Trudeau.

In power for nine years and leader of the provincial Liberals since 1996, the Ottawa lawyer made his stunning announcement Monday evening — just 12 months into his toughest stretch in government, leading a minority.

Suspending the house will give time for negotiations with hundreds of thousands of public–sector workers threatened with wage freezes and consultations with the opposition Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats “in an atmosphere that is free of the heightened rancour of politics,” McGuinty told a hushed meeting of his MPPs shocked by the resignation.

He was accompanied by his wife, Terri, a Catholic school kindergarten teacher who has made no secret in recent years that she wants him to spend more time with the family.

“When the legislature returns, we will either have negotiated agreements in hand or a firm sense of what the opposition will support,” the premier added, emphasizing all of that will be up to his successor.

Speaking to reporters later Monday night, McGuinty pointedly left open the possibility he would contest the federal Liberal leadership — refusing four times to rule it out.

“I’m not making any plans whatsoever beyond my term of duty here at Queen’s Park,” he said. “I’m going to stay focused on my responsibilities here.”

Opposition party leaders thanked him for his service but said it’s irresponsible to prorogue the legislature with the province struggling to eliminate a $14.4-billion deficit and almost 600,000 Ontarians unemployed.

“Given the scope of the challenges our province faces, now is not the time to close the doors on the legislature and walk away . . . nothing gets done,” said Conservative Leader Tim Hudak.

Hudak urged the Liberal party to “move quickly” on a leadership convention to replace McGuinty, an MPP since 1990 when he succeeded his late father, Dalton Sr., who died that year.

“As a man, as a husband, as a dad, I get it.”

Shutting the legislature will put a temporary halt to committee hearings on the cost of the two cancelled gas plants in Mississauga and Oakville, noted NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

“The work we need to do here is simply too important to stop not . . . the people who make this province work every day sent us here to do a job,” she told a news conference.

“Stopping that work, while the Liberals select a new leader, is really not serving very well the people who sent us here.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has now outlasted all provincial premiers in office when he was elected in 2006, congratulated McGuinty on his tenure.

“Our two governments have worked together to serve Ontarians, from implementing Canada’s economic action plan to keeping the auto industry in the province of Ontario, and I salute Mr. McGuinty’s many years of dedicated public service,” said Harper.

“On a personal level, I extend to Mr. McGuinty my very best wishes for all his future endeavours.”

The premier’s departure from Queen’s Park followed an endorsement of 85.8 per cent support at last month’s Liberal convention in Ottawa, which insiders described as another turning point.

“He knew he had various options,” said one confidante, pointing out McGuinty is resilient.

He took the helm of a defeated party in 1996, survived a “dump Dalton” movement after losing the 1999 provincial election to Conservative Mike Harris before taking power in 2003, then beating the odds to win again in 2007 and last fall.

McGuinty’s exit from the provincial scene is an opportunity for Hudak and Horwath, who have been in their jobs since 2009, enjoy higher personal popularity than the premier and would potentially be better known to voters in the next provincial election than his replacement.

The premier departs at a point where his government has come full circle.

After taking power in 2003, he made peace with public-sector workers, particularly teachers, after years of strikes and tumult under the Tories.

But he hits the road at a time when tumult is returning over his wage freeze on teachers and other civil servants. Education unions, once key Liberal allies, are now more aligned with the New Democrats having helped them win last month’s byelection in Kitchener—Waterloo.

McGuinty was the first Liberal premier in 125 years to win three terms.

The father of four adult children was the architect of the 13 per cent harmonized sales tax, full-day kindergarten, a health premium of up to $900 per person, reduced average class sizes in Grade 3 and below, extended vaccinations for children, added teachers and nurses, closed heavily polluting coal-fired power plants, began measuring and reduced health-care waiting times.

However, there were also damaging political scandals, including the $3,000-a-day consultants at eHealth Ontario, the ORANG air ambulance fiasco, the cost of at least $230 million to cancel gas-fired power plants in Liberal-held Oakville and Mississauga and a so-called “slush fund” to ethnocultural groups, including a cricket club that got $1 million without asking for it.

“Our government hasn’t been perfect,” McGuinty acknowledged Monday.

“But when it comes to the big things that families count on us to get right — schools, health care, the environment and the economy — we’ve gotten it right every time.”

He will remain in power until a successor is elected by about 2,500 Liberal party members, including MPPs and candidates from all 107 ridings, delegates from each constituency and party brass and luminaries.

McGuinty’s explosive news was a closely held secret.

“He let some of his senior people know over the last 24 to 36 hours,” a top Liberal insider told the Star. “The rest found out when you did.”

The premier said he will remain as MPP for Ottawa South — which is represented federally by his brother David, who is also mentioned as a federal Liberal leadership contender — until the next provincial election.

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